Team documentation

Confluence alternativeDocumentation stops being a second tool

A ticket says what to ship. It never says why this option was chosen. That half ends up in another tool, on another subscription, and is lost the moment someone leaves the team. Manifst keeps it with the backlog.

Included on every plan, free plan included. No optional module.

The real cost of separation

What you lose when docs live somewhere else

Three effects, found in almost every team running two tools.

The link dies before the page

A ticket points to a spec through a URL. The page is moved, renamed or archived: the link breaks, and nobody notices until they need it. When both objects live in the same project, the question never arises.

You search twice

Search "billing" in the backlog, then search "billing" again in the docs tool, then reconcile the two yourself. In Manifst, global search covers both corpora at once and only shows what you are allowed to see.

Permissions drift apart

Two tools, two user lists, two offboardings to carry out. The gap between them is exactly where sensitive information stays readable six months too long.

What the documentation space contains

A full documentation tool, not a "notes" field

This is not a long description attached to a project. It is spaces, a tree, a history and permissions: the four things that separate documentation from notes.

Spaces and nested pagesReorderable by drag and drop
Rich editorHeadings, lists, tables, code, images, attachments
Version historyEvery save creates a restorable version
Comments and labelsOpen or resolved threads, watch a whole space
Per-space permissionsSeparate from backlog permissions
11 templates provided

Each carries its own writing guidance, in italics, to be deleted as you go. A template that does not explain what each section is for ends up filled at random.

Meeting notes Purpose, decisions with their rationale, dated actions
Functional specification Problem, out of scope, alternatives ruled out, migration
New joiner onboarding Access to request, people to meet, check-ins
And eight more All available in French and English
The comparison

Manifst and Confluence, without flattery

Two products that do not aim at the same thing. The table says so both ways.

 ManifstConfluence
Subscription Included, free plan too Separate subscription from Jira
Link with the backlog Same project, same permissions, same search Two products joined by an integration
Spaces and page tree Yes Yes
History and restore Yes, page by page Yes
Comments, labels, watching Yes Yes
Page templates 11, bilingual, with built-in guidance Many, plus a marketplace
Hosting France Depends on the region chosen
Going further

What documentation changes in your rituals

Writing decisions that hold

A decision without its rationale gets relitigated at the next meeting. The meeting notes template requires the rationale and the owner, line by line.

Sprint review vs retrospective

A shared Definition of Done

The DoD lives in the project, not in a shared file. What counts as "done" is decided once and read back in the same place as the sprint.

Definition of Done: checklist and examples

Shorter user stories

When the spec is one click from the ticket, the user story gets short again. That is the most reliable symptom of well-placed documentation.

What is a user story?
Frequently asked

Questions about documentation

Is documentation included in the subscription?

Yes, on every plan including the free one. It is neither an optional module nor a second subscription: spaces live in the same project as the backlog, under the same permissions.

Does Manifst replace Confluence?

For a product team documenting its specifications, meeting notes and decisions, yes. For a company intranet with hundreds of macros, whiteboards and public knowledge bases, no: Manifst covers project documentation, not enterprise content management.

What happens if someone overwrites a page by mistake?

Every save creates a version. History is browsable page by page and any earlier version can be restored without contacting support.

Can access to a space be restricted?

Yes. Permissions are set per space and are independent from backlog permissions: a team can read tickets without seeing a documentation space, and the reverse holds too.

Does search cover both pages and tickets?

Yes, it is a single engine. One query returns super epics, epics, tickets and documentation pages from the project, respecting the permissions of whoever is searching.

Can existing documentation be imported?

Markdown is converted on import: a Markdown export from another tool pastes into a Manifst page keeping headings, lists, tables and code blocks. There is no automated import of a complete Confluence space.

Write the first page with the first ticket.

The free plan contains the complete documentation space. There is nothing to enable and nothing to pay to try it.